Most Anticipated Games of the Year…for me

There’s a lot of games coming out soon. While this and last month have been pretty barren on the new release front, September onwards promises to be very packed out with hit games one after another. Not to mention Sony and Microsofts Motion Tech coming out too. Theres a lot of big titles coming out before the end of the year – games like Gran Turismo 5, Little Big Planet 2, Fable 3 and so on. But for me there’s only two games that I’m really interested in –

Platinum Games’ Vanquish is the first. It’s been a while since Shinji Mikami gave us the marvel of Resident Evil 4 – forever changing the angle at which 3rd person shooters were played from, and it’s about time he gave us something new. While I wasn’t a big fan of Platinum Games’ other title – Bayonetta – Vanquish has my trust in Mikami as well as a rather more equal multiplatform delivery. Vanquish looks a little like Halo crossed with P.N.03 in the best ways possible. While the shooting looks solid, it’s the melee moves and attacks that really set it apart from western third person shooters. Japanese don’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to shooters, so it’ll be interesting to see if Mikami can pull it off here.

The other title is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. This had me sold when I saw the trailer two years ago and since then my excitement has been building. I’m really hoping this is gonna be good – not just any old good, but God of War good. It certainly has the looks, but until I’ve had a go there’s no telling what it’ll play like. I really want this to be good – the music, the voice actors, the graphics all have me very excited and it would be the biggest disappointment ever if it turned out to be anything less than stellar.

Of course there are a lot of other games on my winter buy list. Fist of the North Star, LittleBigPlanet 2, Force Unleashed 2, Fallout Vegas, Medal of Honor, Sengoku Basara, Front Mission Evolved, GT5 ect. But those two games are the ones that’ll make or break my winter!